Vagabonding begins!

Helen Keller said “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all”….

Smart woman.

After 1 week at home, I have decided that it is time to pick up the pieces, and try to salvage a daring adventure for this Fall. Plan B (always subject to change) is to leave October 16th, fly to London for 1 night, hop down to Italy to visit a sick friend, then get my butt to Egypt ASAP, where it is cheap, hot, dirty, and ambiently more adventurous and dangerous than Europe. I have played with Asians and Europeans….so this will give me about one month to figure out what makes the Arabs tick like they do.

I hope that I am above the water long enough to see Egypt anyway. The Red Sea has pretty much the best scuba diving in the world. The visibility is superb, it is cheap, and there are many shipwrecks including a big bomber, that are at 35 meters or less. I got deep dive and shipwreck certified in Ko Phi Phi back in March this year, so it will be like one big playground for me.

“The best way to break travel plans is to make them”
I can take credit for that one. But, just for the sake of it, here’s the plan:

October 16. Lexington -> London (1 night) -> Milano/Brescia Italy (1 week?) -> Egypt (1+ months)

I’m a big softy so I will be home for Christmas.

Well, as much data in my blog that can be restored after the server crash has been put back into place.

The comments are missing and stats are wrong, but thats not a big deal. What is bad is that I could only restore up to Sept 13, so some important events over the last week are missing. I will work on re-writing some of the Oktoberfest goodies as well as getting more pictures posted.

Here’s a recap:

I had just left Oktoberfest in Munich and flew into Brussels, where I met up with my Dutch friends and they drove me up to S-Hertogenbosch, a nice town of about 200K people that is an hour south of Amsterdam. The plan was to hang there for a few days, then go up to Amsterdam.

I never made it.

I did not have internet access, so after spending a day walking more than 10KM to an internet cafe that was broken when I got there, I found a guy on the street (complete stranger) that let me come inside of his home and use his computer. I told him it was an emergency, that I had a family member in the hospital. Unfortunately, I received the crushing news that my grandmother, whom I was quite close to, had passed away. There is no worse feeling than being 4100 miles from home when your family needs you. After a nice dinner with Suus, my Dutch friend, I immediately took action and decided that I would make it back to the US for the funeral at least. With the help of Paul her boyfriend, and her driving 90MPH for 45 minutes to get me to a remote train station, I managed to just barely make the last night train back to Brussels. It was a lonely, introspective, 2 hour ride into the city. From there, I took another train out to the airport, where I slept on the concrete departure hall floor until my morning flight. I flew Delta on an aging airline that to me was the perfect representation of their financial situation. There were broken overheads that kept coming open, and we fought against Atlantic headwinds at full throttle for 9.5 hours (it would normally take less than 7) until I arrived into Atlanta and then Lexington.

It was a miracle, but within 24 hours of receiving the bad news, I was standing with my family back in Kentucky in time to make the funeral. Simply amazing.

Having been yanked out of my vagabonding cocoon prematurely, I am dazed. A combination of jetlag, grief, sleep deprevation, and culture shock have turned me into a zombie of sorts. When I first arrived home, I made a snap decision that vagabonding had come to an early end. Now that I have had time to catch my breath, I know that this cannot be true. If I stay here, I will get old!

So despite the budget and emotional hit of coming home 2 months early, I will not stop. I have had 3 serious job offers in the last week, I can feel the tractor beam of the cubicle working its evil magic. I can’t stay here too long or I will fall right back into that trap.

My backpack sits in the corner, still semi-packed, and I can’t wait to sling it on again.

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